Rainbow 6: Siege review

Available on Xbox One (tested), PS4 and PC

Only a week or so on from launch, Rainbow Six: Siege has become a game that people love or hate with a passion. The fans love it because it's tough, skill-focused, smart and distinctive; a thinking man or woman's shooter that doesn't take all its cues from Call of Duty. The haters hate it because it's neither the Rainbow Six that they remember nor the Rainbow Six they wanted to see. Well, team thumbs down have some very good points, but if you join team thumbs up you'll realise that while Siege might not be a faithful update, it’s a fantastic reinvention.

True, the lack of planning makes for a more action-oriented, less tactical Rainbow Six, though there's more of a tactical dimension to the minute-by-minute gameplay than this implies. You could also argue that there's as much Counter-Strike in Siege's DNA than Rainbow Six, and you'd arguably be right. The lack of any serious single-player content is disappointing, and the graphics can be underwhelming. There's a lot of generic, boxy architecture, flat-looking furniture and bland décor in the world of Siege, while the lighting is a little flat to boot.

Related: Rainbow Six Siege tips and tricks guide

Terrorist Hunt is fantastic, with a powerful ‘just one more go’ factor that’s only amplified by the desire to unlock more operatives and then more weapon mods and customisations for each operative – this all costs a lot of renown. The real meat of Siege, however, is the competitive multiplayer mode. This is a slightly tougher sell.

Multiplayer Siege can be hard to get to grips with. Even more than Terrorist Hunt it requires real teamwork, and without some kind of strategy in place the going’s tough. When Steve originally reviewed the game he would have been playing with other journalists and they would all, likely as not, have been wearing headsets. In post-launch games with regular players, this simply isn’t the case. As a result, synchronised assaults are few and far between, it’s not uncommon to see attack player after attack player blunder into a defence killzone, while team-kills are not as unusual as they really should be. Throw in the odd griefer or the wag who kills the hostage on the way to extraction, and Multiplayer isn’t always what it can be.

But when it comes together, blimey, it’s about as good as team-vs-team action gets. There’s a palpable tension as players hustle to improvise and ambush or a breach, along with plenty of breathless moments where there’s just one man standing against two or three foes. You could argue that the different objectives don’t actually make an awful lot of difference, or that certain weapons or operatives could do with balancing, but there’s something brutal and unpredictable about Siege Multiplayer that just works. Maybe it’s that no wall is really safe (even the toughest can be breached by specific characters) and that your enemies might even burst through the ceiling or blast through the floor, but there’s an energy here that leaves many rivals looking tame.

With time some of the silliest players will leave for other things, while the more committed fans will hone their teamwork and expertise. This will be for the good, but it’ll also make Siege an even more brutally challenging game than it already is. The trick is to stick with it. When you die, you die for a reason. Sometimes it’s because the other player has a better vantage, sometimes it’s because they’re just faster and more accurate. Sometimes you were just clumsy, thoughtless or stupid, blundering into the room with the objective in without a flashbang or smoke. You can spend too long focusing on the sights, or playing with your operative’s gadgets. Lose situational awareness and you’re often dead.

Related: PS4 vs Xbox One